Are Apple Working On An iPhone Nano?

The words Apple and budget very rarely find themselves in the same sentence – unless of course, it’s “I can’t wait to blow my child’s university budget on the latest iPhone.” Today however reports have emerged that the fruity company is working on an iPhone which will retail for just £125 – contract free!

According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, the new scaled-down iPhone (possibly called the iPhone Nano?) would use left over parts from the iPhone 4, though we doubt we would be seeing a Retina Display in this budget model at that price. The reports come from Bloomberg’s usual “people familiar with the matter” who actually saw the device last year though since nothing has been heard about it until now, chances of it actually making an appearance this year seem less than certain.
The new phone will be one third smaller than the current iPhone 4 and Apple is thinking about launching the device at the crazy price of $200 without a contract – which is about what you would get an iPhone 4 for at the moment but with a back-crippling 24 month contract on top. Should this actually come about, it will see Apple attempt to break into the mid-range market sector they have never touched previously, despite a lot of money being made by other less premium manufacturers. It would also open up whole new countries such as India and China, who at last count have quite a few people living in them.

In other Cupertino news, Bloomberg also reports that Apple is planning on doing away completely with separate CDMA and GSM models, preferring to bring out the next iPhone which will work on both. It is a logical step really since it launched the Verizon iPhone on the CDMA network last month. The report also goes on to speculate that Apple are working on a universal SIM, which would let iPhone users pick from a variety of GSM networks without having to switch the so-called SIM cards that associate a phone with a network. We can’t imagine this is a step in the right direction but for Apple it would probably mean more control over its product.

As with all rumours about Apple, these have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. However the idea of a scaled-down iPhone doesn't strike us as the most ridiculous idea we've ever heard, and opening up the iPhone brand to a lot more people would surely be appealing to Apple. And it's not like Apple haven't done something similar with the Nano and Shuffle versions of the iPod.